It was a bipartisan display that capped a year of squabbling about how best to implement the formula: immediately on all new spending or only after a $400 million “restoration” to the basic education line item.

Wolf’s signature marked a defeat, of sorts, for his administration and legislative Democrats, all of whom supported the latter strategy, but the governor’s tone Friday made it sound like water under the bridge — for now.

“I don’t think there’s any disagreement … on how important it is that every student in this state, regardless of their zip code, get a quality education,” he said. “I’m sure in the future politics will enter into the conversation, at some point, for education funding.”

The governor appeared optimistic as he described the tone of budget negotiations, so far, as positive.

“We’re continuing to work,” he said. “I think there is a tone on both sides that we want to get to a good, fair outcome.”

Meanwhile, the House Education Committee hasn’t wasted any time stirring up some of those new political battles — between last week’s hearing on a proposal to eliminate hold harmless to Monday’s scheduled vote on House Bill 2125, which would change union leave policies to eliminate “ghost teachers,” the partisan divide is likely to resurface as the clock counts down on the 2016-17 budget.

The committee will also consider a resolution, sponsored by Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery, directing the Joint State Government Commission to study school district consolidation.

House Republican Caucus spokesman Steve Miskin said Friday that while there is growing interest among members about eliminating hold harmless and school district consolidation, neither are legislative priorities.

“Hold harmless, especially, is a tricky issue to navigate,” he said. “There are more who like it than those who don’t.”

Senate Republicans appear lukewarm on the issue, too.

“This [new formula] is the answer to hold harmless,” said Senate Education Committee Majority Chairman Lloyd Smucker, R-Lancaster. “Hold harmless was essentially embedded into the formula, or lack of formula, we had in place. This begins to right that.”

“The goal of the formula was to move toward funding education more fairly around the state,” said Jenn Kocher, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre. “Before we would consider taking any steps to accelerate or change what the Commission has done, we would want to hear from all of the parties involved to get a full assessment of any impacts. Just as the Commission spent time and research developing the formula.”

And both chambers will still have to reach an agreement on how much more money will be spent on basic education in 2016-17. No word yet on how close that number, if there is one, might be to what the governor wants, although Wolf again reiterated on Friday the need for more school funding.

“The formula only works if we begin to give school districts additional funding to restore the unfairness in our school funding distribution,” he said. “We saw bipartisan support for this new formula lead to its final passage and our students deserve the same effort towards finishing the job: balancing the budget, fixing the deficit and further investing in education at all levels.”

Wolf as part of his February state budget proposal for 2016-17 requested an additional $200 million in basic education funding. However, his proposal was built on the assumption basic education would get $400 million more in funding as part of the FY2015-16 budget that had not been completed when he issued his 2016-17 budget request.

Several education funding advocacy groups have been pushing for $400 million more in basic education funding for FY2016-17: the $200 million Wolf’s 2016-17 budget proposes in addition to the $200 million he didn’t get from his $400 million proposal in 2015-16.